A Zoom Art Date with The Unexpected Gypsy

As a Patreon supporter of The Unexpected Gypsy, I get regular inspiration and instructional videos from artist Wendy Robinson. One recent benefit of supporting her was a live Zoom session in which she & her Patreons created while we chatted.

It was lovely!

Each of us chose our own project to work on.

I created these faces on old book pages using an India ink brush pen.

The ink flowed readily from the brush, and sassy, peaceful, powerful faces appeared.

I find that doing this type of open-ended creative project while listening to a conversation or watching a video allows me to shift into a relaxed attitude and just play.

This character looks like a fairy superhero to me -- I added splashes of watercolor to the face after the India ink dried. 

I hope you find an opportunity to create in a loose, unplanned way.  To simply allow yourself to play with your art supplies.

Osher Figure Drawing with Model Emily

We had a wonderful Osher class today with model Emily!  We began the class with five two-minute gesture poses, and I encouraged my students to draw rapidly, capturing interior structures as well as exterior contours. Emily gave us active, elegant poses to study.

We moved on to drawing the face using shadows primarily.  David set the camera to transmit a black-and-white image, and we started the first two minutes of the fifteen-minute pose with the camera de-focused. After two minutes, we sharpened the image a little, and after two more minutes, we sharpened the image to tack-sharp.  

This approach allowed us to really see the shadow shapes without getting caught up in trying to draw features, and it forced a technique artists often use in the studio in real life, intentionally blurring their vision.  

 We finished up with an hour-long pose (with breaks for Emily!).  Some students focused just on the portrait, and others drew the entire foreshortened pose.

Many thanks to model Emily for her elegant poses and rock-solid stillness!

Figure Drawing Upside-Down Gestures and the Face

 

In Friday's Osher class, our model, David, was also our technical support.  He figured out how to flip the camera's image of himself upside down so that we could have upside-down gestures.  

When drawing familiar things like the human form, a part of our brain thinks it "knows" how the final image should look, and tries to "help," leading to a struggle between what we see and what we think.  When we turn the familiar on its head, we free ourselves up to see & draw what's really there.  

Below are gestures that were drawn from an inverted image. I notice that I was more likely to capture the line of action rather than try to divide the body into my usual segments.  Sometimes things got out of proportion, but it all felt fresh and exciting.  And,turning them over at the end felt like receiving a gift -- a delightful surprise!

After gestures, we talked about the proportions of the head and face, and finished up with a long pose focusing on the portrait (first image).